A false accusation of rape can cost an innocent person their education, their job, and their reputation. It can force them to spend years in prison. It can ruin their life.

In addition, every false accusation of rape potentially gives ammunition to people who might want to falsely argue that other accusations or rape – ones in which a rape really did take place – are false.

A student has described going through “mental torture” after a rape case against him was thrown out in court because police had failed to hand over more than 40,000 messages from his accuser.

Liam Allan, 22, faced up to ten years in jail charged with six counts of rape and six counts of sexual assault against a young woman over a 14-month period that began when he was 19.

The criminology student at Greenwich University had spent nearly two years on bail and three days in Croydon Crown Court when the trial was stopped in a dramatic fashion after it emerged police officers had failed to hand over evidence that proved his innocence.

The alleged victim had claimed she did not enjoy sex, while Mr Allan claimed it was consensual and she was acting maliciously because he refused to see her after he returned to university.

Now, the judge has called for an inquiry at the “very highest level” to understand why police failed to hand over critical evidence including 40,000 messages from the accuser to Mr Allan and friends.

The messages showed how she had continually messaged Mr Allan for “casual sex”, said how much she enjoyed it and discussed fantasies of violent sex and rape, The Times reports.

Outside the court, Mr Allan said he went through “mental torture” over the two year period and relied on the system to uncover evidence that would exonerate him.

When first accused, he turned to a local lawyer he had done work experience with and said he was terrified at the idea of going to prison with sex offenders and worried about what would happen to his mum and flatmates when he was away.

“You are all on your own. I could not talk to my mother about the details of the case because she might have been called as a witness. I couldn’t talk with my friends because they might have been called. I felt completely isolated at every stage of the process,” he said.

“I can’t explain the mental torture of the past two years. … I feel betrayed by the system which I had believed would do the right thing, the system I want to work in.”

The life-changing discovery was made at the 11th hour when a new prosecutor, Jerry Hayes, took over the case one day before the trial began and ordered police to hand over records — including a computer disk that contained 40,000 messages.

Mr Allan’s lawyers had already sought access to the accusers’s telephone records and messages but their requests were denied on the basis there was nothing of interest in them.

Upon discovering the messages, Mr Hayes said he would offer no evidence in court and would like to “apologise” to Mr Allan.

“There was a terrible failure in disclosure which was inexcusable,” he said. “There could have been a serious miscarriage of justice, which could have led to a very significant period of imprisonment and life on the sex offenders register. It appears the officer in the case has not reviewed the disk, which is quite appalling.”

Speaking later, he said detectives had previously told him the sexual messages were “too personal” to share.

“The defence quickly saw the information blew the prosecution out of the water. If they had not been seen this boy faced 12 years in prison and on the sex offenders’ register for life with little chance of appeal. This was a massive miscarriage of justice, which thank heavens was avoided,” he told the BBC.

Judge Peter Gower said Mr Allan was not guilty on all charges.

“There is something that has gone wrong and it is a matter that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in my judgment should be considering at the very highest level,” he said.

“Mr Allan leaves the courtroom an innocent man without a stain on his character.”

Mr Allan’s defence lawyer Julia Smart said she also received details about the text messages the night before she was due to cross examine the accuser, and when she told the court of her findings the trial was scrapped.

Mr Allan’s mum, Lorraine Allan, 46, said the “current climate” means that many people are treated as “guilty until you can prove you’re innocent.”

A spokesman for London Metropolitan Police said: “We are aware of this case being dismissed from court and are carrying out an urgent assessment to establish the circumstances which led to this action being taken.

“We are working closely with the Crown Prosecution Service and keeping in close contact with the victim while this process takes place.”

The Crown Prosecution Service said they will not conduct a “management review” with the Metropolitian Police to “examine the way in which the case was handled.”

Mr Hayes, who is a former Conservative MP, wrote in The Times the case marked the most “appalling failure of disclosure I have ever encountered.”

“The CPS are under terrible pressure, as are the police. Both work hard but are badly under-resourced.

“Crown court trials only work because of the co-operation and goodwill of advocates and the bench — but time pressures are making this increasingly difficult.

I recently came across this Michelle Obama quote from Parade magazine:

I took my last job [before my husband entered the White House] because of my boss’s reaction to my family situation. I didn’t have a babysitter, so I took Sasha right in there with me in her crib and her rocker. I was still nursing, so I was wearing my nursing shirt. I told my boss, “This is what I have: two small kids. My husband is running for the U.S. Senate. I will not work part time. I need flexibility. I need a good salary. I need to be able to afford babysitting. And if you can do all that, and you’re willing to be flexible with me because I will get the job done, I can work hard on a flexible schedule.” I was very clear. And he said yes to everything.

Did Michelle Obama set back feminism when she told a job interviewer that her husband was running for U.S. Senate?

I came up with the idea for this poll after reading John McEnroe’s recent claim that if Serena Williams had to compete against men, she would be ranked at about #700 instead of her current position of #1.

Since YouTube came into existence many years ago, I have watched a huge number of different videos of protestors in the U.S. standing in the street in front of oncoming traffic.

And in every case – every single one – the protestors were always left wing, and never right wing.

Occupy Wall St. took that term literally – they occupied the street. So did Black Lives Matter. And now the anti-Trumpers are doing it.

But of all the tea party protests and other right wing protests in the U.S. that I have ever watched, I have never seen even one where they were standing in the street in front of oncoming traffic.

Why is that?

Here is a recent anti-Trump protest from San Diego, where they are standing in the street, in the dark of night, in front of oncoming traffic, and which shows – with a very loud “THUD!” – one of them getting hit by a car:

In this video, the speaker says the government should stop giving money to women for having babies out of wedlock. She says the government should force the biological father to pay for raising the child, instead of the taxpayers.

She also says that if she had two daughters, and one had a baby out of wedlock and needed money to take care of the baby, and the other one got good grades in high school and needed money to pay for college tuition, she would give money to the one who wanted to go to college, and not to the one who had the baby out of wedlock. Her rationale for this is that we should reward good behavior, not bad behavior.,

I agree with her. I believe that we should reward good behavior, not bad behavior. I would give the money to the daughter who wanted to go to college.

New Orleans police were hunting Friday (Nov. 27) for Joseph “Moe” Allen, 32, the first suspect to be named in the Bunny Friend Park shooting that injured 17 people. And they are pleading for people who were at the Upper 9th Ward playground to come forward with information.

Despite the crowds at the park when the gunfire erupted Sunday evening, no one there had sent videos to police, Mayor Mitch Landrieu said. “And everyone knows there are lots,” he said.

Two groups of people turned their guns on each other, and police found as many as 70 bullet casings just the next morning. No shooters other than Allen have been identified by police.

“This is just the first shoe to drop,” Landrieu said. “We are going to do everything we can to make sure all the other shoes drop as well.”

The mayor warned that anyone harboring Allen also will be prosecuted. “All of us are going to work around the clock,” Harrison promised.

Allen, 32, faces 17 counts of attempted first-degree murder. Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office records show he is a convicted felon with a rap sheet dating from 2002. It includes home invasion, carjacking, illegal carrying of weapon and possession of cocaine and heroin.

At a Friday afternooon news conference, officials sidestepped several questions, including whether they had identified the musical group that was said to be recording a video at the park at the time of the shooting and whether Allen belonged to the gang family that includes the father of murdered 5-year-old Briana Allen.

However, Harrison did say Allen has ties to more than one group. Sheriff’s Office records show Allen was arrested in 2002 with Travis Scott, who recently pleaded guilty to a federal racketeering charge as the ringleader of the FnD gang, named for Frenchmen and Derbigny streets.

Harrison said all but one or two of the Bunny Friend Park victims were in “fair to good condition,” and no one’s wounds were life-threatening. “We are so glad that it wasn’t worse,” he said.

I think this sign is a great idea, because it tells the truth. It seems to me the only people who would be upset by it are the people who don’t want people to know that Brown was a criminal. For example, Obama tried to block the release of the security video which showed Brown committing theft and assault, despite the fact that there had been multiple Freedom of Information requests for the video. I like this sign because it is a victory for the truth.

FARMER CITY — A local business owner with a penchant for controversy set his sights on Ferguson, Mo., this week.

“Congrats Michael Brown one year with no criminal behavior,” the sign outside Schmidt’s Welding and Machine Shop in Farmer City read Tuesday and early Wednesday, days after the one-year anniversary of a Ferguson police officer shooting and killing unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.

Phil Schmidt, who owns the sign and the business, was unapologetic…

“It is what it is — all these people in Ferguson going crazy over a guy that broke the law three times that day, tried to kill a cop, tried to get his gun, it’s crazy,” Schmidt said Wednesday morning when contacted by The News-Gazette.

I’m no expert, but I think it’s going to cost a lot more than $75,000 to repair these damages. And that doesn’t even take into account the lost revenues from not being able to rent those rooms. The students who did this should be forced to pay for all of those costs, be expelled from the school, and have criminal charges filed against them.

I think their parents should be prohibited from paying for the damages. The students should have to work to pay for it.(more…)

Checking both google and google news, I did not see this reported on by any of the mainstream media, other than Time magazine. No New York Times, Washington Post, or Associated Press articles. No CBS, NBC, or CNN coverage.

No wonder why some on the political left hate Fox News, which did report it.

TIME: Your mother — she was your protector. She often carried a gun, she seemed to be very fond of guns. Did you inherit your mother’s fondness for guns?

MAYA ANGELOU: Well, I do like to have guns around, I don’t like to carry them. But I like — if somebody is going to come into my house and I have not put out the welcome mat, I want to stop them.

TIME: Have you ever fired a weapon?

ANGELOU: Of course!

TIME: At a person?

ANGELOU: I’ve fired it period, not at a person I hope!

I was in my house in North Carolina. It was fall. I heard someone walking on the leaves. And somebody actually turned the knob. So I said, “Stand four feet back because I’m going to shoot now!” Boom! Boom! The police came by and said, “Ms. Angelou, the shots came from inside the house.” I said, “Well, I don’t know how that happened.”

When Barack Obama was a state senator in Illinois, he voted against allowing people in their own homes to use guns to protect themselves and their families from murderers and rapists.

Barack Obama thinks that Maya Angelou should be in jail because she used a gun to protect herself, in her own home, from an intruder who could have been planning to rape and murder her.

David Siegel is the founder and CEO of Westgate Resorts, a real estate and timeshare company. In a recent letter to his 7,000 employees, he wrote:

Who is really stimulating the economy? Is it the Government that wants to take money from those who have earned it and give it to those who have not, or is it people like me who built a company out of his garage and directly employs over 7,000 people and hosts over 3 million people per year with a great vacation?

I can no longer support a system that penalizes the productive and gives to the unproductive. My motivation to work and to provide jobs will be destroyed, and with it, so will your opportunities. If that happens, you can find me in the Caribbean sitting on the beach, under a palm tree, retired, and with no employees to worry about.